Review Essay: Educational Ethnography beyond Scholarly Ethnography. Transferring Meanings to Cyberspace

Abstract

"Readings in the Anthropology of Education" includes several texts by well-known writers on ethnography. These were specifically selected for teachers who developed their teaching in various (socio-cultural) contexts in order to complete their teacher-training in anthropological approaches and techniques. Taking ethnographic research as its core, the work introduces the main contributions of anthropology and ethnography in the field of education in three parts. The first part is about the evolution of anthropology and ethnography in the educational field. The second part includes texts by authors who specialize in ethnography within a functionalist and structuralist philosophy. The third part presents applied educational studies based on these approaches. In this essay I start from a global (re)vision of VELASCO, GARCÍA and DÍAZ's text. I look into the current state of methodological approaches and the ethnographic strategies described as well as into the application of them in the school in general and, particularly, in socio-cultural education. I present a reflection from cultural materialism about the structural and super-structural changes linked to recent technological innovations and how these innovations are shaping new ways of qualitative research and, in particular, ethnographies based on productions in cyberspace. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs060223